Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Mira’s arrow crosses the first line of defense.

Oliver moves his left foot too late. Veric is still outside the right angle to cover. Rhayne is far, but the distance Mira chose also gives too much time to a weapon that owns area.

The Battle Ribbon leaves her arm in a descending cut.

The metallic silk hisses in front of Oliver and arrives long before the arrow. What looked like a mistake was Rhayne’s plan, and she doesn’t stop the motion. The coil cracks against the floor, gathering momentum, and rises in an arc, cutting the air from below on the second beat.

This time, it lands clean.

’Bullseye. Good girl.’

The arrow is thrown high, spinning until it strikes the arena barrier and falls without force near the edge.

Oliver turns his face to Rhayne for an instant, his ear still marked by the earlier scratch. "Thanks, sweetheart."

Rhayne doesn’t answer. She’s already pulling the ribbon back, eyes on Mira.

Freya is still looking at me.

The offer went deeper than the arrow would have if it had hit.

The suspended screen replays the exchange in slow motion. Rhayne appears at the top of the arena from three different angles, the ribbon opening first in descent, then rising with a precision clean enough to look simple. Her expression stays serene, calm, as if she were enjoying herself in the arena.

The crowd lets out a low, collective sound, the kind that swells before it can understand what actually happened, whether from the movement or from the grace of watching Rhayne fight.

’Looks like Rhayne will have suitors soon.’

I keep that thought to myself.

"I told you it was a mistake," I say to Freya, letting my voice drop. "Too much distance. Too much room for Rhayne. An arrow from that angle doesn’t get through."

Freya blinks once.

For a few seconds, she seems split between the arena and the sentence I just set over her. The ice hasn’t come. That’s good.

Or bad.

With Freya, sometimes the absence of a reaction only means the reaction is choosing the best way to arrive.

She turns her face back to the field. "Mira. Pay attention to the group’s defensive composition."

Mira hears her. Her smile shrinks a little.

On the opposite side, Zhang Xi takes a step forward.

Until now, she’d been working as support. Touching, stabilizing, correcting flow, returning rhythm. Now she advances, changes place, and moves in between Kellan and Mira, closer to the line where Veric and Oliver are starting to recover control.

The shift looks small to anyone watching only position.

But I know it will change the whole fight.

’This will be interesting. My squad is about to have serious problems.’

Veric advances more calmly this time. Undertow sits low enough for him to see, while the new gladius stays tucked behind the shield. Oliver follows along the flank, hammer held in both hands, waiting for the moment Zhang Xi has to choose one of them.

But she doesn’t choose. Zhang Xi never attacks first, and it seems they forgot that.

When Undertow comes forward to take space, Zhang Xi steps in, pivoting sideways along the shield’s edge. Her palm touches the inner side of Veric’s wrist. Her hip turns before his arm finishes its motion. He can’t strike with the gladius now; he’d cross his own arms and end up hopelessly off balance.

Veric angles Undertow a few degrees inward, just enough to stay on his feet without destabilizing, but too much for his line to keep any destination.

Zhang Xi’s strike leaves her almost at Veric’s back. If she attacked, he’d be in trouble.

Oliver strikes into the gap, trying to cover the prince.

The hammer comes in a lateral arc, heavy, aimed at the space Zhang Xi would have to cross to reach Veric from behind. She gives half a step back, lets her weight drop onto her heel, and touches the hammer’s haft with two fingers near Oliver’s lead hand.

She doesn’t block it. She changes its course entirely.

The hammer passes flush by her shoulder and hits the floor hard enough to open a short crack in the stone. Zhang Xi is already on the other side of the blow, her free hand touching the inner forearm of Oliver. This time using OXI.

His arm locks for half a second. Pressure point.

Veric, recovered now, spins and tries to seize the chance, cutting with the gladius. Zhang Xi drops her body, the blade passing an inch from her skull. She moves inside the sword’s reach and touches the side of his elbow with her fingertips. The blade loses its line by a hand’s width, and that hand’s width forces Veric to duck fast behind the shield to avoid a penalty.

The bleachers go quieter.

Cadets like impact. It takes them a while to understand control.

"She’s absurd," Freya says.

"She is. Like a Kung Fu master dictating the rules."

Zhang Xi isn’t beating Veric and Oliver. She isn’t being pushed back either. She guides the attacks into useless places, enters at the points where a route changes, touches joints, tendons, the base of a wrist, the inner elbow. Each contact steals intention. Each step takes the correct weight out of the next blow.

Kellan and Mira try to use the opening Zhang Xi carved on the front line and focus an attack on Rhayne.

Rhayne sees her team is tangled up with Zhang Xi and closes the space around herself. The Battle Ribbon begins to turn in wide circles, cutting approach from the floor, the flank, and above.

It’s territory. Rhayne found a creative way to hold defense without needing to react.

Kellan tests the edge with the gauntlet and pulls back when the metallic silk scrapes sparks off the metal and triggers the slowing passive. Mira looks for an angle to draw the dagger and finds no clean path.

"Are you going to keep focusing on someone with airtight defense?" Freya shouts.

Mira looks at Kellan. The two change targets.

Good correction.

Freya turns back to me, but now her eyes are firmer. "And what guarantees me it’d be different with you?"

"Different from what?"

"From all of them." Her voice comes low, but hard. "Guilds, leaders, promises. They all corrupt in the end."

In the arena, Zhang Xi touches Veric’s shoulder and sends his own advance sliding past Oliver. The hammer has to stop before hitting Undertow. Veric curses something the crowd’s noise swallows. Oliver adjusts his grip, less frustrated, more attentive. Friendly fire would be reason for mockery.

"I won’t change in the end," I say. "I’ll make a new end. Thirstfall can’t go on like this."

Freya doesn’t show approval. She doesn’t accept it either.

"I’m relatively new to Thirstfall," she says. "A little over a year. I’ve already seen people with that same dream die before. Some didn’t even die, they just carried permanent consequences."

Kellan and Mira advance together against Veric and Oliver, forcing Zhang Xi to give ground for the first time in several movements.

She yields space without losing her posture. She jumps a low sweep from Oliver aimed at her legs, and on landing, she touches the side of Kellan’s gauntlet as it drives a punch at Veric.

The gauntlet, aimless after Veric ducks, lands full on the prince’s own shoulder.

Zhang Xi didn’t only dodge Oliver’s attack. She corrected Kellan’s trajectory into their own man.

The arena falls silent for a second, trying to work out whether that was luck or skill.

Mira comes in low, advancing like a lynx, and nearly reaches Oliver’s ribs with a spear thrust. Rhayne extends the ribbon and cuts the path with a whip crack at the point.

The clash grows tight. The space is short now, and Freya’s team is adjusting.

"Freya," I say. "I am the consequence."

She looks at me without turning away. "That’s an impact line."

The word hangs between us for an instant.

Impact.

Inside the arena, Oliver hits the floor with the hammer a few centimeters from Zhang Xi’s foot. She escapes by spinning outside the shaft, touches the side of his knee with a low kick, no force in it but carrying OXI, and the leg loses its firmness. Veric covers the space with Undertow, keeping Kellan from punishing Oliver in the same instant.

I hold my eyes on Freya.

"Impact," I repeat. "Right."

She narrows her eyes.

"In the leaders’ round, you and I will both be inside the arena. If I win leading my team, you join my guild."

The cold comes before her answer.

Small crystals are born around her boots, spreading white lines across the stone outside the barrier. The air near my fingers goes dry. Freya doesn’t raise her voice. Her presence changes the space around her more clearly than any shout could.

"Are you trying to put a collar on me, Dryden?"

The fight goes on, but Freya isn’t focused on it anymore.

"I’m offering you a fight."

The ice keeps growing, until my breath condenses in front of me.

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